International Border Studies Center

Border Seminar 2026 “Conquest, Borders, Arts” — Call for Papers

“The title by conquest is acquired and maintained by force.” Chief Justice Marshall, Johnson and Graham’s Lessee v. M’Intosh (1823)

“The Conqueror model contains a submodel we shall call the Empire model, or model of imperium, which is the process by which the prototypical conqueror ‘reaches out’ and ‘grabs’ or ‘seizes’ new lands in order to dominate those lands and the indigenous peoples living there.” Steven T. Newcomb Pagans in the Promised Land: Decoding the Doctrine of Christian Discovery (2008)

2026 marks four years since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. In hindsight, Russia’s neo-imperial ambitions appear as heralding a global re-awakening of imaginaries and practices of conquest. We live in times of terrible bloodshed. Another school is bombed. Global military spending has never been this high.

In Border Seminar 2026 we want to ask what we see as related questions of conquest, borders, and arts.

• What can the history of conquest propaganda teach us about contemporary imperial imaginaries?
• How does the imperium reproduce itself through ideology, legal frameworks and cultural narratives?
• How do various artistic genres and performances feed (or resist) into what anthropologist Michael V. Wilcox calls the “terminal narratives” or the lasting of the conquered/bordered peoples and institute (or erode) the moral economy of conquest?
• What cognitive models expressed in discourses normalize conquest and divorce it from its consequences (i.e. migrations, displacement) and what are those that sustain hope and resist apathy?
• If borders and the conqueror (ego cogito/ego conquiro) are the essential products of Modernity, what does their relationship tell us about the darker, occluded dimensions of modern borders (i.e. as instruments of both fortification and expansion)?
• What are the repressed pluriversal alternatives to these models?

Papers addressing these and related questions from the perspectives of global studies, American studies, literary studies, popular culture, cognitive science, performance studies, linguistics, education, history, art history, anthropology, and other fields are welcome. Following models of performance as research and embodied research practice, we also welcome creative responses to the theme, including texts, performances, and artworks as well as all mixed-format (scholarly/artistic) presentations. Selections from the proceedings will be published in the second volume of the IBSC Reader series.

Border Seminar 2026 “Conquest, Borders, Arts” is intended to offer an environment in which the arts and scholarship freely intersect. The program includes keynote lectures by IBSC scholar Marta Grzechnik (author of Conquerors of Seas and Oceans: The Maritime and Colonial League and Polish Colonial Aspirations, 1924–1939), and by Chicanx scholars Francisco Lomelí and María Herrera-Sobek.On May 27, Chicano actor and artist Herbert Siguenza will perform Diego Rivera: His Story, a one-man show. Creative workshops by California artists will be offered to an international group of students. Performance artist Martin Błaszk will lead a workshop and a performance/installation.

Border Seminar 2023: Migration Narratives and Border Studies:  May 15-26, 2023

 CONFERENCE Program: https://docs.google.com/document/d/17Irc3G9DC57cZEyh-WcbVQGMNwsz1vIB/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=104991489835999765556&rtpof=true&sd=true

 Conference Handbook – practical info:

 https://ibsc.ug.edu.pl/newsletters/2023-border-seminar-conference-handbook/

Border Seminar is an international conference organized by the Border Studies Group (BSG) working at the Institute of English and American Studies, Faculty of Languages. University of Gdansk. The idea of the conference came from a longing for a better understanding of what seemed to the members of the BSG as a highly undertheorized and misunderstood concept of the border.  We think of the border in as many senses as there are. We are eager to learn from interdisciplinary dialogs, to seek new vocabularies and approaches to break affective aporias or imaginary spells of the border.

The Program of the Border Seminar 2021 is available here: https://ibsc.ug.edu.pl/?page_id=25864